There are many different types of small business marketing, and all the options can quickly feel overwhelming. Before deciding on a marketing plan, it’s helpful to do some research on the different opportunities, which options are recommended for your business category, and how much each one costs. Websites, social media, email, blogs, and print are some of the options available, and making strategic choices can help drive the best results.
Email Marketing
Yes, email has been around for a long time. But it’s still one of the most effective forms of marketing available, and it comes with a low price tag. This marketing strategy typically consists of sending mass emails to potential, current, and former customers with content that includes business updates, promotions, and special product information.
Email marketing is a flexible solution because every part of the message can be tailored to your business and what you want to share. Personalized emails can be sent to specific groups of customers with targeted information created to appeal to their exact needs. There are several ways to collect email addresses, including website registration, running a contest, or offering promotions and discounts.
Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is all the rage, and for good reason. Using platforms like Instagram, TikTok, Twitter (X) and Facebook (Meta) allow businesses to reach potential customers around the world while constantly gaining new followers and buyers. This style of marketing isn’t going away anytime soon, so pay attention to what’s trending, even if it feels overwhelming.
If you’re just getting started with social media marketing, pick an outlet to start with and explore how to best harness its power. This can include posting daily, creating reels, investing in paid advertising, partnering with an influencer, or building a following. Whatever you decide to do, engagement will be key. Customers want to know that the business they are buying from cares about their needs, wants to hear their opinions, and will respond quickly to questions or concerns.
Content marketing
Content marketing is a strategy that small businesses can use to create and develop customer relationships. Its goal is to provide relevant, informative, educational, and entertaining content that will engage people and make them want to learn more about your brand. The key to successful content marketing is to use it strategically and make it useful for your target audience. It should never be heavy or powerful, but rather useful and interesting.
The ultimate goal of content marketing is to establish your presence as an authority on the product or service you offer. This is done by capturing and retaining the customer’s attention, which is extremely difficult to do in our fast-paced world. When done right, content marketing can capture every point in the buyer’s journey, from the moment they casually browse to the moment they decide to buy from your business.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Marketing
This marketing strategy uses the process of SEO to help your business website or shared content rank higher on search engines like Google. When performing a keyword search for a product or service, users only focus on the first few results that pop up. So if your business sells high quality kites, you will get the most traffic if your website is one of the top results people see when they search for “best kites”.
SEO marketing comes into play when a small business chooses to apply calculated methods that will help them maximize their search engine rankings. This is done by incorporating several different tactics simultaneously to achieve the highest possible speed. A basic SEO marketing strategy uses keywords, internal linking, image optimization and competitive analysis.
Mobile Marketing
It goes without saying that everyone’s eyes are almost always on their phone. Mobile marketing is a great way to capture this attentive audience, often without them realizing they are being marketed to. By leveraging existing tools like location tracking and search history, businesses can personalize their marketing campaigns for mobile users.
Posting ads on social media or posting on websites means reaching more potential buyers every day, no matter where they are. As a rule, mobile marketing is much cheaper than traditional advertising and is not very complicated to set up. You should start by making sure that every aspect of your small business website is completely mobile-friendly, from viewing to purchasing. Once this is set, you can start experimenting with other options such as location-based ads, sending short message service (SMS) messages to customers, and in-app promotions.
Traditional Marketing
Although not as popular as it once was, traditional marketing can still be an important part of your small business marketing strategy. Traditional marketing includes any marketing effort that isn’t online, and depending on what you’re selling and who your target audience is, it can be a solid choice.
Traditional marketing may include magazine or newspaper ads, billboards, direct mail, and radio or television advertising. Even in our electronic world, these marketing tools are still relevant and effective. The biggest downside is usually cost, as traditional marketing almost always comes with a higher price tag than digital efforts.